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Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

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Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#351

Post by clairity »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #299
clairity wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they’ve been continuously building schools in LA because of the luxurious funding. at least 3 new schools within walking distance have gone up in my neighborhood over the past decade. schools just aren’t a problem for densification here.

Has LA become particularly more dense over the last decade in your area? If not, then they should have no planning problems as long as they have funding. But someone decided to build a bunch of apartments over a few short years, you could quickly saturate your school infrastructure (and not to mention teacher hiring) until the school system could catch up.

to some extent, but that doesn't matter since the point is that we have plenty of schools and the money to build enough new schools, even if we built ten high rises in my neighborhood. sure, at the theoretical limit it could be a problem, but that isn't anywhere close to the primary limiting factor in the foreseeable future.

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#352

Post by foofoo4u »

greedo wrote: post #350
foofoo4u wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard this quote before, but I like it. It's a good point. So how about this to help lead the discussion. We, the HackerNews community, seem to have a general consensus that increasing supply is the best way to lower prices. Rather straight forward, really. But the reason why housing is currently limited is due to a conflict of interests; existing property owners want to stifle supply. And they have more…

Is more housing really the answer? I keep thinking of induced demand increasing traffic on the roads, and I wonder whether California would just have more people consume the additional housing. Instead of increasing the supply, perhaps addressing the demand is the only way out.

> Is more housing really the answer? > Instead of increasing the supply, perhaps addressing the demand is the only way out.

Prices are a reflection of supply and demand. There are only two ways to lower prices. Either increase supply or lower demand. One of them is a solvable issue, which is to increase supply. The other option, which is to lower demand, is either unrealistic or unfair. How, do you suppose, we lower demand? The only way you can lower demand is by getting people to change their mind. But how can you realistically expect people to change their mind? Everyone wants to move to L.A., the Bay Area, and other expensive cities because of the good jobs, universities, and career opportunities exist there.

> I keep thinking of induced demand increasing traffic on the roads

Induced demand is an interesting topic, but do not conflate it with the housing crisis. These are two fundamentally different economic situations. Induced demand is theoretically "induced" because the public good or service is free and utilizing the resource comes at no additional cost to the consumer. Homes on the other hand are not free. They come at a price. And therefore, there is nothing inducing its demand like you would theoretically see with widening a freeway.

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#353

Post by q1w2 »

opportune wrote: post #80

I find it interesting that the majority of democrats were in favor of the duplexes, republicans were split, and the LA city council (14/15 democrats) were all opposed to the new law. This matches my experiences in SF and other parts of the country. I’ll ignore the irony that republicans are voting against expanded property rights and transparently are voting simply for class interests… I am not sure why democratic el…

Party line is a poor indicator of property interests. It is correlated, but not causal.

The causal variable is property ownership vs renting. City council members are older (regardless of party membership) will be property owners, and thus because this issue impacts them personally and very directly, they will always vote to increase their property values (ie less construction / less supply).

Democratic leaders are still usually older, and thus owners - and since this issue impacts them very very personally, they will vote against their constituency.

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#354

Post by tomnipotent »

JamesBarney wrote: post #191
tomnipotent wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking of condos. Otherwise, I don't it's possible for a multi-unit apartment building to sell single units.

I thought the difference between an apartment and a condo was specifically who owned it, i.e. is it for sale. I feel like it's asking why there aren't there any tropical storms with sustained wins of 100mph. There are, we just call them hurricanes.

You can't just offer up an apartment building as a condominium. There's all sorts of regulations, building codes, and inspections required to convert.

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#355

Post by x0x0 »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #318
opportune wrote: post #80

I find it interesting that the majority of democrats were in favor of the duplexes, republicans were split, and the LA city council (14/15 democrats) were all opposed to the new law. This matches my experiences in SF and other parts of the country. I’ll ignore the irony that republicans are voting against expanded property rights and transparently are voting simply for class interests… I am not sure why democratic el…

As you've suggested the dissonance between democrats largely polling in favor of the measure but city council democrats rejecting could be because the city council members have conflicting personal interests or are being influenced/lobbied by a minority who oppose the law. So perhaps the distinction of democrat is too broad and unhelpful in this situation and it should be broken down into finer demographics. 26% of A…

Renters vote at far lower rates than home owners. This leads to not particularly surprising outcomes...

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#356

Post by clairity »

ordinaryradical wrote: post #195
clairity wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you’re making a reasonable initial point and then veering into an unsupported conclusion. it’s reasonable to say that static analysis (upzoning reducing prices ‘overnight’) can’t capture real-world dynamics (prices will change more gradually at a macro scale, since development isn’t instant or uniform). but the idea that sub-market rate housing only comes through incentivizing/mandating developers is a wholly unsuppo…

This is a great reply. Thank you for engaging instead of just dismissing me or downvoting. I want to say I agree somewhat: regulatory environments, complex zoning and permissioning, leads to development overhead and ultimately higher prices for everyone. (Ironically I seem to be getting pushback from fiscal conservatives in these threads even though I think we mostly agree there.) Where I disagree is from this point…

while LA (city) is denser than most people realize, LA (the region) is decidedly not dense overall, as large portions are low-to-mid density, choked by a tangled glut of roadways, and pockmarked with mini-downtowns intermittently. (poor) zoning is absolutely a significant factor in limiting supply artificially, which in turn backstops, and moreover propels, pricing.

you might be making more of a sociopolitical argument, that the rich are going to eat all the gains and more, while crowding out everyone else, through mechanisms like regulatory capture. that's possible, but the substance of that argument is not coming through very clearly amidst the economic tangents. it still doesn't support the idea that below-market mandates are necessary to bring prices to any natural, or artificially manipulated, affordable equilibrium. note that in a rich-eats-everything-world, we'd not have enough tax money to make housing artificially affordable. if the rich can dominate real estate in that way, they'd surely dominate tax policy in their favor as well.

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#357

Post by perl4ever »

KittenInABox wrote: post #253
ghaff wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People complain about parking requirements but, in most US cities (and indeed in a great deal of the world) most households have cars. If I lived in Seattle, even if I didn't need one day to day for work/errands/etc., I'd certainly own one for going out to the mountains and so forth on the weekends.

Forgive me, since I don't own a car: Wouldn't it be cheaper to rent a car if you're only going to use it once a week or so? I mean, with the payment itself, plus insurance, plus gas, regular maintenance, is it worth the price?

Well, how much does it cost you to rent a car for a weekend?

I just checked and it appears to be over $300 for the tiniest clown car available near me.

That is roughly triple the federal mileage reimbursement rate (assuming 10Kmi per year), so I'm guessing renting every week would be more expensive than owning.

Moreso if you drive very little, because insurance, gas, and maintenance are less when you drive less. They're not pets; they don't have to be fed and walked when you're not interacting with them.

But I would be more concerned about the cost of having things delivered. I'm not sure if the scenario you are thinking of is going to the store to get a week's groceries, or to the mountains to snowboard.

I'm also wondering whether the context is "every software engineer makes at least $500K" or "all the people with $1000 in their checking account will be first against the wall when the revolution comes".

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#358

Post by closeparen »

colechristensen wrote: post #28
gautamcgoel wrote: post #9

Obviously I support these kind of movements - the housing crisis is no joke. But every time I see an article about multifamily homes, I think: ok, but we really need is are hundreds of tall high rises with 500+ units, like in New York or Boston, each of which uses land much more efficiently than LA (2x more residents per square mile).

There isn’t a housing crisis, there is a jobs location crisis. Apartments are terrible, there is plenty of space out there for people to have their own and not be crammed in like sardines. Cities though have the problem of allowing much more space for jobs than they have for housing. You don’t want high density housing in your city? Fine, cap your employer zoning. It’s a big country out there and people need to decen…

There isn't a traffic crisis, there's a sprawl crisis. Cars are terrible, we know perfectly well how to make human habitats that don't require $8k/year 2-ton death traps.

Cities though have a problem of allowing much more surface area than people can reasonably traverse. You don't want traffic in your city? Fine, stop adding subdivisions.

We're not farmers. We benefit from other people, not from land. Stop this fantasy that everyone can have a country estate 15 minutes from the city center. It's geometrically impossible.

Nobody needs to use time "efficiently" by going 60 miles an hour. If you can't reach what you need on foot or bicycle, that is a land use problem, not a transportation problem.

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#359

Post by [deleted] »

bluGill wrote: post #233
itake wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1/ who actually wants to live in a ADU? 2/ adding 1 more unit to a plot is hardly going to make dent in the crisis. We need to look at Asia to see how they offer affordable house: giant high density housing complexes with ground floor grocery stores and shopping malls for convenient access.

> who actually wants to live in a ADU? The homeless. The poor. Young students. Artists. Elderly. Refugees. That is anyone who can't get anything better. ADUs are useful housing for those who are on the edges, but pretty much all of the above wants better - they just can't afford it. If money wasn't a limit how would that change your housing? Indoor pool? Bowling alley off your bedroom? servant quarters? Everyone has…

[deleted]

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#360

Post by perl4ever »

milkytron wrote: post #339
KittenInABox wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me, since I don't own a car: Wouldn't it be cheaper to rent a car if you're only going to use it once a week or so? I mean, with the payment itself, plus insurance, plus gas, regular maintenance, is it worth the price?

I don't have a car either for this exact reason. I could get a car, but the costs are just insane when compared with the alternatives. $8-10k a year in savings is usually what I come out to.

Do you find, in general, that buying smaller slices of things from service providers tends to be cheaper?
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